Hand Drawn Web Design Resources

Hand Drawn Web Design - Making a list of sites I have found regarding hand drawn web site templates.

Flickr: Hand Written Blogs - Not just the template but the whole blog.

Tutorials:

We are Not Freelancers has a video tutorial: Technique for creating a hand drawn website.

Talk Mania created a hand drawn template and has a guide to what they did to get there.

Web Designer Wall also shows their process in making the current hand drawn template.

Go Media Zine shows how to turn a hand drawn sketch into a vector illustration.

Resources: (Most are geared to using PhotoShop).

Webitect has links to resources and a few tips for designing.

1st Web Designer has resources for using PhotoShop as well as fonts anyone can use.

My Ink Blog has examples of templates and resources for making your own.

Design M.ag has template examples and resources.

Design Reviver has doodling and other resources for making hand drawn templates.

Snap 2 Objects has sketches, doodles and other hand drawn elements.

Hongkiat has 40 hand drawn fonts.

Examples:

Smashing Magazine writes about the trend to hand drawn websites and shows their top picks.

Hongkiat has 50 hand drawn template designs picked out as favourites.

Outlaw Design Blog showcases 30+ hand drawn websites.

Blog Spoon Graphics has 50 Inspiring Illustrations in Web Design.

Create Who You Are Blog has a few more designs reviewed.

Pick Our Bones in Peace

I'm watching National Geographic, about lions. Lions in Africa and Asia are dying out due to the human population who keep crowding them and killing lions for killing livestock or attacking people. The naturalists and scientists are working on high tech solutions, considering cloning some of the remaining lions so the species doesn't die out.

Isn't the whole thing kind of crazy? A low tech solution would be much more practical and sensible. Why are people allowed to take over so much of the planet, like parasites on the Earth? We have so much population that people are starving themselves in areas where they can't grow enough food to support the population. How can people have so little control and yet expect we have the right to kill off other lives just because they are animals? Just because they get in our way?

Isn't the loss of habitat for animals an early warning sign for ourselves? How far will over population go before people clue in and really do something? When all the available space is gone will we just move to another planet, another host body to suck dry?

It's frustrating watching shows about large carnivores. They are most preyed upon in the over population game.

Also, the more large predators we kill off the more the more the scavengers like pigeons, rats and cockroaches can take over. Cause they learn to live with people, even in deepest, darkest, urban environments. They learn to live off of us, our garbage and our silliness has people out there feeding pigeons while others are killing lions, wolves and polar bears for being in the way. So that in the end, can you see us killing ourselves and leaving the planet to the scavengers who can then pick our bones in peace.

Reading Non-Fiction

As I posted to Twitter:

Everyone knows people who read non-fiction are plotting to take over the world.

Do you read non-fiction?

Personality Cluster

A quiz from Soulfully Blonde.

Your Personality Cluster is Introverted Thinking

You are: You are objective, honest, and credible. Intellectually curious, you have many diverse interests. You are more inclined toward ideas than people. Fiercely independent, you are unapologetically unconventional.

What's Your Personality Cluster?

Applying at LifeTips Network

I'm applying for a topic at LifeTips geared to Single Women.

Keep Romance Alive

Whether or not you're dating someone special you can enjoy an evening of romance. Cook a nice dinner, set the table with all the trimmings, even candles if you have them or pick some up. Use napkins, add a flowers and a centerpiece on the table, serve wine, just as if you were setting things up like a fancy, glamorous restaurant. If you aren't dating anyone do it all the same, just for yourself. Treat yourself to a romantic dinner. You're worth it!

The Grass is Greener...

Keep in touch with married and Mom friends. At times it really is nice to hear how the other shoe fits, how they would like to be single again, not sharing so much of their life, energy and time. Talking to women on the other side of the fence can help you appreciate what you do have at times when you feel you don't have much.

Skim your Latte

Try your coffee with whipped and/ or heated skim milk instead of cream or whole milk. Milk thickened this way is very low cal and yet will give you as much taste as you have become used to.

I've Become Super Noob

I started writing as Super Noob on Lindsay's blog, Web Design for Idiots. Tonight I wrote the following as an introduction to who I am and why I'm someone who might have a reason to be writing there.

I'm posting this from my very messy desk with the TV on to my left and my nearly cold coffee at my right hand, in danger of wrecking my faithful little scanner. I'm a real woman. I'm a real, live, 40+, divorced Canadian woman, a writing legend in my own mind.

In June of 1996 I began on the Internet. I was an IRC diva for quite a long time. It was a lot of fun and most of it I really should not write about here. That's what personal blogs are all about. I wrote for a zine first, a small print publication called The Crying Clown. From there it was all online. At one point I was producing my own newsletter for writers, InkSplatters, sent out through what is now Yahoo Groups. I was a web writer for HerPlanet, BackWash, BellaOnline, Suite 101, WZ-ard.com and other sites, forums and newsletters some still living and some not. I still write for Creative Fat Grrl on LockerGnome, a babbly blog more than anything seriously functional. Writing for a network is a different educational experience than writing for yourself. Which is one reason I keep doing it.

I've had sites and then blogs of my own. I didn't begin online in the great time of blogging, I was here before that. So my first sites were put together with just HTML code as I learned and goofed it up. I've used software and I've cut and pasted code and I've hand coded my own pages. I'm not an expert, time alone isn't enough to make you an expert at web design or development. I have learned however and as I learn I see how much more there is to be explored and discovered. But, don't look to me expecting I'm a know-it-all. If I ever say that you can be sure I'm just laughing at myself.

I love creative things. I've done so many interesting forms of art, just to try them out. I made ASCII art for a few years. I continue to take digital photos of abandoned places here in Ontario, starting in 2006 when I bought my first digi camera. I'm also teaching myself to draw cartoons, some people even like them! This week I re-learned the art of cutting out paper doll chains so I could make them into a graphic for a blog. I really think it's important to keep the creativity and free writing in blogging. It would be a real shame if the personal journal and creative element of blogging were lost in the rush for SEO and money making.

Anyway, I'm here to help the less experienced blogger with my experiences. I've got a stack of great books about web design on my bookshelf and I will be using them (finally) for more than a place to hide my dust bunnies. I seem to collect books with great good intentions and then not get very far. You can also find me writing about web writing and posting writing ideas and prompts on my blog, Word Grrls.

ThatGrrl.ca

Completely off topic... did you know that a nail file works really well if you have an itchy spot on your back that you just can't reach? I've been rubbing my back on my chair tonight wishing for something to work. Then I had the great idea for the nail file (not one of those treacherous metal ones, just some cardboard type) and that worked great!

Happy Summer

It's too warm here today. Icky. I like the garden stuff in Summer but I don't like the weather. Spring is much nicer, mild and sometimes rainy. I like that. Even Winter is easier to take than Summer. Sure the occasional storms can get pretty bad but still, I'm only freezing, not melting.

Happy Summer.

Startch on Black Clothing is Not a Good Thing

I know I shouldn't be wearing black today but it's what I pulled out from the pile of clothes I should have put away from the laundry this week. I'm about to begin peeling potatoes. If you have done that a few times you know how that statch runs out and gets all over your hands and your shirt, even if you try to be tidy and not wipe your hands on yourself. But, thankfully, we have the washing machine, here and working even now. I try not to take things for granted but when you don't have something for several months you remember all over again how much you shouldn't take it for granted.

We are still landscaping. This weekend we are also making dinner for a family get together on Sunday, tomorrow. I don't mind the cooking and the work, too much. But I do get kind of fed up with being pushed around and having most of my input vetoed, often before I have even finished or hardly begun speaking. Mothers! It must just be a thing with them, a part of never really letting go.

It is funny cause I can still remember years ago (decades of years) when I was in my teens and she began to talk to me as an adult versus a kid. I was so honoured and so self important and felt like I really was a someone. Oh how we have regressed... !

Living with your Mother still has a feeling of not being a good thing. Even if it does help us both out. I do miss having my own place, my own space where things are not randomly and casually moved around. I like finding my toothbrush each morning for instance. That's another thing you should not take for granted. Sometimes I feel the only way to really keep track of anything is to hoard it all in my bedroom. But it is getting pretty packed in here and I feel trapped with stuff surrounding me. Urrgh.

At least I still have the little things. My nice smelling shampoos which she doesn't use much, though I leave them out cause I don't mind if she does. I usually get that tacky shampoo head from using the same shampoo all the time by the time I am halfway through the bottle of shampoo so I'm fine with sharing it. Just lets me have the excuse to buy more, more often.

I have my books too. Though everyone acts like I've got a disease when I mention getting a new one. I don't keep the ones I have read, the fiction ones at least. But, even I admit the pile of nonfiction books is pretty huge and I haven't read most of them. I do seem to collect them like dust bunnies.

Well, enough babbling. I have to get to potatoes for that potato salad. Party on.